Law Commons^™

A Comparative Analysis Of Third-Party Litigation Funding In The United States And The United Kingdom, Gary Myers

Faculty Publications

Third-Party Litigation Funding (TPLF), which is also known as litigation finance, involves a financial arrangement in which a third party provides funding to support the plaintiff's pursuit of a civil lawsuit. The third party, in return, receives a portion of the proceeds if the litigation is successful. Like a contingent fee agreement, this type funding model enables a party to bring a lawsuit even if it does not have the resources to pay the up-front costs of the litigation. The important difference is that the litigation funder is not counsel to a party in the case, and that TPLF essentially …

Recruiting The Right Candidate, Cynthia Bassett

Faculty Publications

The market for hiring a law librarian has changed significantly over the last few years. Those on both sides of the equation are a little uncertain about the whole process, wondering when the job search should start, how much to expect in pay, and what aspects of a position are up for discussion. The challenge of a limited pipeline of law librarians requires new approaches to recruiting.

Guns, Vices And Freedom, Oh My: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation, Royce De R. Barondes

Faculty Publications

This Essay estimates factors within States that are associated with per capita firearms ownership and the extent of legal restrictions con-cerning firearms. The metrics are: for the former, a proxy consisting of the fraction of suicides with a firearm; for the latter, Giffords Law Center’s ratings of the restrictiveness of a State’s regulation of fire-arms. For each, the Essay estimates the relationship between it and each of the levels of vices and freedom.

The Giffords score (more restrictions scored higher) is negatively related to the Cato Institute’s measure of overall freedom and regula-tory policy freedom but positively related to Cato’s …

The Success Of Pre-Enforcement Challenges To Antidiscrimination Laws, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

Formally, judicial analysis of a challenged statute's validity should be consistent, regardless of the challenge's pre- or post-enforcement posture. A post-enforcement posture arises when an aggrieved party defensively challenges a purportedly unconstitutional statute being enforced against them. Alternatively, a pre-enforcement posture arises when an impacted party strikes first, attacking the statute by asserting a credible threat that the law will be enforced against them in the future. Either way, judicial evaluation of a statute's validity should turn on its content and effect-not on whether it was challenged before or after enforcement.

This Article challenges that assumption, arguing that pre-enforcement challengers …

Just Consumer Financial Protection: Prevention Or Cure, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

This article examines the relationship between two complementary and related consumer financial protection approaches: regulatory oversight of financing terms (ex ante protection) and bankruptcy discharge of consumer debts (ex post protection). Although often conceptualized as distinct areas of law, consumer financial regulation and consumer bankruptcy are two sides of the same coin and function together to treat the harms of financial distress. This article seeks to explore the relationship and tensions between these various approaches by juxtaposing consumer debtor-creditor law attitudes and legal developments in continental Europe (primarily France and Germany) with those in the United States. After …

Choosing Your Judge, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

Accounts of American litigation pose a contradiction: Forum shopping is acceptable, but judge shopping is not. Formal disfavor toward judge shopping is pervasive, and attempts by parties to manipulate the assignment of their case are deemed abusive and even sanctionable. Nevertheless, sophisticated judge-shopping tactics have proliferated in specific areas of the law—particularly in challenges to executive branch policies and in the reorganization of large companies under Chapter 11. In these disparate areas, judge-shopping strategies have been deployed in high-profile cases, ranging from a challenge to the FDA’s authorization of an abortion drug to the opioid-driven bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma. In …

Petition Power, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

The law cannot be kept secret. We cannot comply with rules that we do not know. Nor can we question their legitimacy, which is both our right and our duty as citizens. And yet, a substantial body of law applied in this country is difficult for anyone but federal agency insiders to piece together. Rather than publishing regulations that lay out standards of conduct for the future, many agencies interpret the law, and articulate and implement new policies, as they go. Those subject to the law they implement are left to piece the rules together by studying whatever information is …

Top Ten Ways To Improve Your Mediation Skills, John Lande

Faculty Publications

This article uses Real Practice Systems (RPS) theory to identify things that mediators can do to improve their mediation skills. This begins by mediators recognizing that they have a complex mediation practice system if they mediate regularly. The article includes links to a short video and articles to help mediators understand their unique systems. Using these insights, mediators can complete a self-assessment questionnaire and take advantage of the RPS Menu of Mediation Checklists to tailor their own checklists to fit their practices. Mediators can continuously improve by participating in ongoing educational practice groups.

Ready, Set, Mediate!, John Lande

Faculty Publications

This article summarizes the discussion in a program at the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution’s annual conference about helping parties prepare for mediation sessions. The article describes benefits and goals of preparation, studies finding failures to prepare before mediation sessions, consequences of failing to prepare, and how courts can promote preparation. It lists the audience’s experiences of problems due to inadequate preparation and materials they use or would like to use.

The last part of the article provides resources to help everyone be as ready as possible when their mediation sessions begin. These resources are useful for private mediations as …

It Wasn’T Me: How The Doctrines Of Sovereign Immunity And Misnomer Frustrate Missouri’S Petroleum Cleanup Efforts, Lauren Elizabeth Fleming

Missouri Law Review

Honk! Honk! Crash! You have just been injured in a car accident. The other driver is completely at-fault, but luckily, she was insured. You timely submit your valid claims to her well-known insurance agency, but the agency denies the claim for no apparent reason. While confused and frustrated, you take comfort in the fact that society created insurance companies to address your exact injuries and that the legal system provides remedies for this very situation. Your attorney reassures you that the other driver and her insurance agency will be held accountable, and justice will be served.

Faculty List

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Repealing Single-Family Zoning Is Not Enough: A Proposal For Removing Existing Parallel Private Covenants For Violating Public Policy, Gerald Korngold

Missouri Law Review

The United States is currently suffering a pervasive and unsettling shortage of housing and increased housing unaffordability. Rents are at an all-time high, which has a disproportionate impact on people of color and people earning lower incomes as these individuals are more likely to rent rather than own their homes. Moreover, people solidly in the middle class are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase residences within their budgets.

Police Mistakes Of Law, Heien V. North Carolina And Significant Fourth Amendment Interpretive Cases: An Empirical Examination Of Officer Perception, Knowledge And Performance, Christopher D. Totten, Gang Lee, Michael De Leo

Missouri Law Review

This empirical study examines legal aspects of policing in relation to the landmark Fourth Amendment United States Supreme Court case of Heien v. North Carolina. In Heien, the Court found that objectively reasonable mistakes of law by police can support traffic stops. By doing so, Heien extends the permissible margin of error for these stops by law enforcement officers. Due to the potential far-reaching implications of Heien for law enforcement conduct and Fourth Amendment privacy protections, this study aims to empirically examine officer perception and knowledge regarding Heien, including officers’ decision-making behavior with respect to Heien and its core concept …

Masthead

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reality Check: The Aim Of Affirmative Action May Often Miss The Mark Of Equal Protection, Kate Frerking

Missouri Law Review

The American justice system is built around basic guarantees of procedural due process. The Constitution assures certain procedural rights such as notice, an opportunity to be heard, and an impartial jury, not because these rights always ensure successful outcomes, but because they reflect notions of fairness, protection, and equality the nation views as fundamental. While the ultimate goal is that “justice” is served, the Constitution protects “process,” not outcome. If the desire is results-driven, why did the Framers prioritize protecting process over outcome?

Mallory V. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., Due Process And Strange Bedfellows, Michael Vitiello, Daniel Croxall

Missouri Law Review

[As the 2022 Supreme Court term waned, the press and public waited with trepidation or excitement for noteworthy cases that addressed important policy questions, including affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, and conflicts between religious freedom and gay rights. Fewer people shared the concerns of Civil Procedure scholars who anxiously awaited the Court’s decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. For over a decade, the Court found that states violated due process in asserting personal jurisdiction over various defendants despite the lack of any meaningful burden on the defendant’s ability to defend against claims in the plaintiff’s choice of forum. …

Cancel Carte Blanche For The Information Industries: Federalizing U.C.C. Article 2., Michael L. Rustad

Missouri Law Review

Warranty disclaimers, caps on damages, predispute mandatory arbitration, and anti-class action waivers constitute what I call, “no responsibility” or “rights foreclosure clauses” in computer contracts. This is the first empirical study of how the information industries, which include the 100 largest software companies and the 100 largest digital companies, deploy one-sided warranty disclaimers, caps on damages, and predispute mandatory arbitration clauses coupled with class action waivers to shift responsibility for defective software to the user communities. This gives the information industries carte blanche to release dangerously defective software without consequences. In their standard form contracts, the industries do whatever they …

A Tragedy In Three Acts: Discrimination, Retaliation, And Ferpa, Jackson L. Ferguson

Missouri Law Review

As humanity has entered the digital age, we have come to possess incomprehensible amounts of recorded information—by some estimates, 295,000,000,000 gigabytes. With such an abundance of information at our fingertips, careful data management is not just a problem for IT specialists, but an occupational hazard for every American worker with a computer. In Ferry v. Board of Education. of Jefferson City Public School District, a teacher—Tammy Ferry—lost her job because she and her attorney failed to understand the hyper-technicalities involved in data privacy. This Note will argue that Ferry’s school district, the state of Missouri, and the U.S. Congress unintentionally …

Wanted!: Fourth Amendment Protection For St. Louis Residents From The Unconstitutional Wanteds System, Brooke Buerck

Missouri Law Review

Back in the days of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Butch Cassidy, wanted posters were plastered all around town: “Wanted! $5,000 Reward!” Law enforcement agencies still utilize wanted posters today, but they appear more commonly on the internet or in the media rather than in classic paper form with bold lettering and a black-and-white portrait of the suspect that is associated with Western films. The purpose of such wanted “posters” or other similar investigatory tools is to facilitate capture by involving the public and communicate the agency’s priorities by showing the public which individuals and crimes are a top …

Highspeed Pursuit Of A Claim For Negligence: Analyzing Police Liability In A Vehicular Accident Involving Bystanders, Harry Bell Iii

Missouri Law Review

Between 1994 and 2002, 3,146 people died as a result of highspeed police pursuits. Many of these decedents were pedestrians, bicyclists, or occupants of an uninvolved vehicle. In fact, statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) indicate that bystander fatalities make up approximately 42% of total fatalities resulting from highspeed pursuits by law enforcement. Deaths related to these pursuits may be even greater than the statistics suggest due to underreporting on the matter. How is fault attributed when a highspeed police pursuit harms an innocent bystander? Can a court attribute liability to law enforcement? Are there legal remedies available …

Reading The Court’S Palm: The Unclear Present And Future For Cost-Shifting Under Rule 54(D)(1), Anthony M. Whalen

Missouri Law Review

A tie is like kissing your sister1 This unique turn of phrase captures the American attitude towards ties—there are, or should be, winners and losers. But this notion of dedicated victories and defeats is not as strong as it once was. Whether it is the increased frequency of ties in the National Football League (“NFL”) over the past few years, the growth of soccer in the United States, or the split nature of our bicameral legislature, ties are a familiar part of the average American’s experience. Even our judicial system cannot avoid questions of “ties.” The idea that every court …

The Original Meaning Of The Sixteenth Amendment, David Gamage, John R. Brooks

Faculty Publications

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution enshrines Congress’s “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Challenges to the exercise of that power have typically turned on whether the thing being taxed is “income” or not. In the most recent example, the 2024 Supreme Court case of Moore v. United States, taxpayers argued that the Sixteenth Amendment only authorizes taxation of realized income—that is, that gain from appreciated property can only be taxed as “income” when there has been a sale or conversion of that property.

In this Article we argue—based on the original …

Irreconcilable: Mcdonnell Douglas And Summary Judgment, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Publications

The McDonnell Douglas framework is the most important analytical structure in employment discrimination law. Scholars and judges have regularly criticized the three-part burden-shifting test. Despite decades of criticism, a central feature of the framework remains unexamined - its second step is incompatible with the summaryjudgment standard.

In employment discrimination cases courts often grant summaryjudgment in the employer's favor. Scholars have offered various accounts of why this happens, including docket pressures and published case law that focuses on grants of summary judgment. The second step of the inquiry has largely escaped scrutiny because it appears to be a quirky, but somewhat …

Breaking The Vicious Cycle Fragmenting National Law, Ryan Vacca, Peter S. Menell

Faculty Publications

One of the most troubling and increasingly overlooked problems plaguing the federal judiciary has been the reduction of throughput at the Supreme Court and the resulting fragmentation of national law. The imperative to resolve circuit splits has taken a back seat as the Court grapples with high-profile battles and the relentless crush of certiorari petitions. This fuels confusion and greater fragmentation of national law. Add in the general expansion of national law, and the vicious cycle intensifies.

This Article proposes a solution for expanding structural capacity to address fragmentation that does not require legislative reform or constitutional amendment. It utilizes …

Randy Kiser’S New Book On Professional Judgment For Lawyers, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post describes Randall Kiser’s book, Professional Judgment for Lawyers. He defines professional judgment as “the deliberate synthesis of an attorney’s knowledge, experience, skills, discernment, and character to ethically advance a client’s interest.” The book combines empirical research, cognitive and social psychology, organizational behavior, legal ethics, and neuroscience to improve decision-making by attorneys, clients, judges, arbitrators, mediators, and juries.

Writing It Right: Advice About Written Advocacy From The Washington Court Of Appeals, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

This article concerns “Briefly Speaking: Brief Writing—Best Practices,” a collection of sound advice that appears on the website of the Washington Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate appellate court. The court’s judges explore strategies of appellate practice, but that is not all. In this article, I select five of the court’s insights about effective written expression, insights that can enhance the quality not only of brief writing, but also of much other legal writing.

Political Polarization In America: Its Impact On Industrial Democracy And Labor Law, Rafael Gely

Faculty Publications

This article explores the impact that political polarization is having in the social, legal, and regulatory space, particularly on American worker-management relations. Polarization is affecting decisions involving social relationships and market transactions, the ability of institutions built to generate debate and discussion to successfully complete these missions, and people's willingness to listen to and engage with views contrary to their own.

Easy As Pi, John Lande

Faculty Blogs

This post presents some interactions with Pi, an AI system that is more conversational than others. It illustrates that, in the foreseeable future, AI systems almost certainly will become a lot more sophisticated and be incorporated into much of our lives, often in ways we will not notice

Table Of Contents

The Business, Entrepreneurship & Tax Law Review

No abstract provided.